Domino to Exchange 2007 migration

When migrating to Lotus Notes you need to ensure your customer provides you with a list of groups which need to migrated over to Exchange so you don’t migrate any unnecessary groups into the new infrastructure, this also is required for user accounts.

Your customer should run a cleanup process to ensure all data migrated to Exchange is healthy (ADRAP). Users should also be encouraged to clean up their mailboxes.

      Various groups to migrate:-

Ø Mailing groups (Notes Mail Group gets migrated to Active Directory Distribution Groups)

Ø Access groups (Notes Access Group gets migrated to Active Directory Security Group)

Ø Multi groups (Notes Multipurpose Group gets migrated to Active Directory Mail-Enabled Security Groups/Universal Group)

User clean up:-

Ø Deleting old mail

Ø Removing unwanted attachments

Ø Emptying deleted items

Ø Users are instructed to log off before migration

SMTP address names need to be unique, so for example an additional SMTP address applied to exchange users such as exchange.Contoso.com and or Notes domino.Contoso.com

Migration of data can be migrated in various ways, some options are listed below:-

Ø Per Server

Ø Per Location

Ø Per Department

Ø Per Access

Migration using Microsoft Transporter Suite:-

In brief:-

Contacts will be created In AD, then users from notes will merged into Exchange creating a mailbox enabled user, then data migration will occur. During this destination address details will be updated to reflect where the user’s mailbox is located e.g. Exchange or Notes. This is updated so users can e-mail a user no matter where their mailbox is located.

In order to use the Microsoft Transport suite notes client v7.0.2 needs to be installed on HT sever.

Directory Migration Matching Algorithm

When you migrate Lotus Notes users to Active Directory, the Directory Migration tool in the Exchange Server 2007 Microsoft Transporter Suite for Lotus Domino searches Active Directory for the following types of objects:

Ø Users

Ø Mail Users

Ø Mailbox Users

The Transporter tries to find matches to existing Active Directory entries for the Lotus Notes users instead of creating new entries for all migrated users. There are two types of matches that can be performed: hard matches and soft matches.

Ø Hard matches are based on proxy address and are considered definitive because each destination object has a unique proxy address.

Ø Soft matches are educated guesses. If a hard match is found, soft match search will not be performed. If no hard match is found and a soft match is found, the user performing the migration must confirm that the educated guess is the correct one before the attributes are merged.

If neither a hard match nor a soft match is found, a new user object of the type specified will be created during the migration. All migrated users will be stamped with the properties necessary for a hard match at the end of migration.

In addition, the Directory Migration tool searches for Contacts with matching proxy addresses. If any such Contacts are found, they are deleted from Active Directory and the directory data is merged with an existing matched object or to the newly created Mailbox user.

Note Mailbox migrations require a hard match to a mail user or a mailbox user. However, if the matching user does not have a mailbox and you specified a mailbox database to create mailboxes in, one will be created at the time of migration.

Multiple Free/Busy Connectors

It is possible to use more than one Free/Busy connector to provide faster response times to remote users. Whether it is appropriate to install additional Free/Busy connectors depends heavily on the overall network structure.

Typically, such an installation would only be in the largest of organizations, with several network locations where Exchange Server users and Domino users coexist, and there is high speed, low latency connectivity between the systems at that location.

New to Exchange Server 2007’s Transporter Suite is the possibility of having “Global” and “Subordinate” Free/Busy Connectors.

Note The use of multiple Free/Busy Connector does not guarantee redundancy in the event of a failure of:

o An Exchange Server 2007 server running the Free/Busy Connector

o A Domino server acting as a Free/Busy bridgehead. It will provide resiliency during a WAN failure (if the site locally hosts a Public Folder replica and a local “Subordinate” Free/Busy Connector).

The first Free/Busy Connector created is considered a “Global” connector, as is responsible for logging into ALL non-subordinate-owned Public Folder servers that house a replica of the Public Folder at this location:

\NON_IPM_SUBTREE
\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY
\EX:/o=OrgName/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)

Using the Transporter Command Shell, you can determine if a connector is a “Global” connector using the command:

Get-DominoFreeBusyConnector

And then by looking at the GlobalConnector attribute. A result of “True” indicates that this is a “Global” connector.

Note “Global” connectors will not log on to Public Folder servers in Exchange Server 2003 Administrative Groups when a Calendar Connector from Exchange Server 2003 is present in any of the Routing Groups of the Administrative Group.

Subsequently installed Free/Busy Connectors are considered “Subordinate” and will only log in to the specified servers. To set a server on a connector, you use the Transporter Command Shell, with a command of the form:

Set-DominoFreeBusyConnector –Identity 'Identity of connector' ‑ConnectedFreeBusyServers pfservername

Written by Daniel Kenyon-smith